People never like to feel their privacy's been invaded--even if all that's been taken from them, they offered up freely. Perhaps without realizing. But freely nevertheless.

"I told you, Miss Green." He glances back down at his instrument. "Ninety-nine parts perspiration," he says again: the beginning and end of all the explanation of his methods he feels up to giving just now. Other days he's a terrible show-off. The motivation comes and goes.

Sherlock catches a string with his thumbnail and lets it go, sounding a short, reverberating note. "I find the distinction between people and things to be a semantic one, for the most part."